3PW made a largely successful return to the building best known as The ECW Arena with a show that played to that building's storied history without [totally] ignoring the fact that it's now the year 2003. Attendance looked to be in about the 250-300 range, not great but not bad either.

I'll get the big negative out of the way first: no Ian Rotten. The website had Ian Rotten vs Rudeboy listed for a month, in fact as I write on Monday morning the match is still listed there. Rotten's appearance wasn't a make-or-break element of the show for me, but he was one of the reasons I made the trip, having never seen him in person. Judging from the number of IWA Mid-South t-shirts I saw in the building I wasn't the only one who didn't realize that Rotten wouldn't be appearing. Either that or he had the world's shortest hardcore match during the 2 minutes I was in the men's room. The rumored Low Ki vs Homicide match didn't happen either, but as this one was never formally advertised I didn't see that as an issue, and both men did appear separately in excellent singles matches.

The new state athletic commissioner was in attendance at this show. Given the heavy scrutiny 3PW came under from the commission a few months ago, I'm wondering if they simply decided to err on the side of caution by not booking a Rotten bloodfest on a night that the brand new PA commissioner would be there. That's pure speculation on my part of course, I must stress that have NO facts to back it up. For all I know Rotten missed his plane. Unlike at some past shows, I didn't really notice anyone from the commission giving instructions to anyone in the promotion, so if they did impose restrictions they at least did so in a professional manner that was invisible to an outside observer - which would be a marked improvement from what I saw at the Electric Factory last spring. Again I feel the need to stress that this commission stuff is all speculation [read: "BS"] on my part, since all I know is what I observe as a fan. I've done too much popping off on this subject in the past without being possession of all the facts. With XPW out of the picture and a new head of the athletic commission in charge, hopefully we won't need to even talk about this stuff in the future. Well, unless Court Bauer decides to start storing and selling porn tapes at wrestling shows a la Rob Black.

Some people may see the promotion's move from the Electric Factory back to Viking Hall as a negative. Personally I love this dump and I'm glad they're back here. With Elks Lodge closing it's good to still have one great old 90s wrestling building actively running shows, and with CZW and 3PW both here the hall will have wrestling twice a month, every month. Given 3PW's renewed focus on ECW nostalgia matches at the top of the card this location fits their promotional philosophy perfectly as well.

Your ring announcer was Bob Artese and your referees were Jim Mollineaux [sp?] and John Finnegan. It's always good to see/hear these guys in this building. The promotion had Artese announce the time of each match along with the winner, a nice touch.

Show opened with two guys who started with the promotion over the summer but were new to me, CJ O'Doyle vs Ricky Vega. Vega looks a bit like Scotty Riggs (inspiring some "American Males' heckles), O'Doyle facially resembles Rob Schnieder from SNL, both are rookies but were pretty decent in the ring. Vega got some good heel heat from the bleacher bums. O'Doyle won the short match with a following a good looking Alabama Jam legdrop. I looked away for a second to take notes and missed his actual finishing move.

Next we had a battle of the super heavyweights as crowd favorite Roadkill took on Monsta Mack. Personally I thought they should have introduced him as "DOI Special Columnist Monsta Mack", but I guess they didn't want to screw up his heel heat since after all everyone loves a DOI columnist. [All kidding aside, the man's columns are really well written and interesting, if you haven't read one you owe it to yourself to check 'em out. OK, cheap plug over, back to the match.] Roadkill got a big pop and played up to it with a funny version of the old Hulk Hogan showboat spot; instead of doing a posedown he turned to each side of the ring and did the "chickens" gesture. Yes, Chicken-mania was running wild! These two had an enjoyable back and forth big man match, though the crowd seemed to get a bit impatient during the latter stages of it. Roadkill started out on top before missing a dive to the outside and wiping out on the railing. Monsta Mack took over until he missed a frog splash with a sickening crash into the mat. Roadkill appeared to have it all but won until Mack pulled the ref into the path of a Roadkill avalanche. Mack wound up getting the duke with a back suplex which the squashed ref revived just in time to count. Both men looked noticeably more comfortable in singles action than they seemed early this year and the match flowed well.

"Hot Stuff" Matt Stryker pinned surprise addition Ruckus in arguably the 2nd upset of the night. Stryker's 3PW gimmick of a heel who thinks he's an 80s babyface is hilarious and really needs to be seen live to be appreciated. I literally did not stop laughing from the time he came out until after the match was over. This was a comedic study in old school vs new school as Hot Stuff pulled out tons of corny, deliberately slow motion 80s moves - some of which, such as the Greco Roman Thumb To The Eye, still work - while Ruckus countered with fast high flying modern offense. "Hot Stuff' won with a Superfly Splash. This would prove significant later on. Crowd didn't quite know how to take seeing this goofy character cleanly beat CZW mainstay Ruckus.

After this it was time to announce the new 3PW commissioner. I have to hand it 3PW as they really did this well. First Artese says that it is time to meet the new commissioner. "Call me The Breeze" starts playing and a returning Joey Matthews comes out. Crowd hates this worse than death and taxes and boos the hell of it, with cries of "Who missed his plane?" etc. Artese tells Matthews that sorry, but he is NOT the new commish. Big pop. Todd Gordon comes out. Nope, sorry, it's not you either. Then Jack Victory comes out. Nope, he's not the new commissioner; he's the bodyguard for the new commissioner. By now the people have no idea who the hell is coming out next. Raven's old ECW music hits. Yup, HE'S the new 3PW commissioner! The place went nuts for him. Smart booking. If they had just brought Raven out straight off he probably would have gotten a fraction of this reaction. Raven says yes he's the new commissioner, and he's putting himself in the main event against Sabu, "and we'll see who else shows up". [Turned out to be the Sandman as advertised, so I'm not sure why he said it that way.] Joey Matthews got mad about getting disrespected and said he could beat anyone in the company if Raven would give him a match. Raven said "How about Low Ki?', so we got....

Low Ki vs Joey Matthews.

Somewhat to my surprise, this was a really excellent match. In some ways it was almost the modern, non-comedic version of what we'd seen before with Stryker vs Ruckus [only taken to a whole nother level] as this was a contest of Matthews' more traditional wrestling and devious heel tactics against Low Ki's strong style moves and brutally stiff offense. Brain against brawn, if you will. Match started slow to the point that Philly fans really didn't like it at first, but it build steadily until it was totally engrossing and had everyone in the place marking out. Fantastic back and forth action that made it seem like either man could win at any time. I was really impressed at how well Matthews and Low Ki worked together and the two of them did a match that told a great story. They took what could have been a style clash and made a near classic out of it. After numerous near falls on both sides, Low Ki won with the Dragon Sleeper in 21:41. If you want to see how well two wrestlers of potentially incompatible styles can work together, watch this match and learn. While Low Ki got the win this match definitely elevated Matthews and took his game to another level. I've never been a big Matthews fan at all but this match made me reconsider that position.

Intermission.

They announced a return date of 12/27 with a special 3PM bell time and an inter-promotional main event of John Zandig & Sabu vs Messiah & Jerry Lynn. Interesting. Why oh why are there so many good shows running in Philly on the 27th when I'll be 500 miles away?

Blue Meanie d. Rob Eckos w/"Superfly" Striker. Stryker was more the focus of the match than the guys in the ring. He did a funny spot with Eckos where he had them both put on masks so they could make the switch when the ref wasn't looking - except that Eckos was in his usual gear and Stryker was wearing Jimmy Snuka type Hawaiian stuff, so somehow the ref managed to catch on to the fact that two totally different looking people were trying to switch places. Meanie pulled Striker's mask over his eyes and the blinded Striker KO'd Eckos to give Meanie the easy win. Afterward Commissioner Raven came out, and announced that since Striker liked to imitate Jimmy Superfly Snuka, he could wrestle the real Snuka on next month's show.

Next we had Jasmine St Clair and Todd Gordon in the Sugar Shack, aka an excuse for some cheap T and A. Not that I'm complaining. Some fan in the front row grabbed at Jasmine on her way out, and she DECKED him before security threw him out. That pretty girl has one hell of a right hook. I have no idea if the guy was a plant but it didn't look like it and didn't play into any angles so I guess not. Jasmine brought out a present for Todd: a sex slave. It's Talia from Assault Championship Wrestling! That's a DOI exclusive for you as I'll bet no one else know who she was. They led her around by a dog collar and had her bend over for all 4 sections of fans. I'd say that someone in 3PW has issues with women, but since a woman probably booked this segment maybe they were just looking to give us a cheap thrill. Eventually they brought out Pitbull Gary Wolfe and his new manager Vixen, a gorgeous but (supposedly) deadly 6+ foot blonde. Finally somebody's lifting a gimmick from KILL BILL, however obliquely. Anyway, Wolfe is a heel now. At one point in his promo he called himself "the ONLY Pit Bull", which while true seemed a little tasteless. He talked about being challenged by Damian Adams, which led into.....

Danian Adams d Gary Wolfe with a rollup out of nowhere. Wolfe threw Adams to the floor early and busted him open with some chairshots for the only blood of the night. Adams wore the crimson mask big time. This was a near squash until Adams got the quick pin.

Xavier pinned Homicide in 15:40 by pulling the tights in the semi main. Crowd popped big for the entrances but didn't react much to the match. Match was fast paced, crisp, and told a great story, as you'd expect from these two. At one point Xavier reversed the Cop Killa into a backward Styles Clash in a sick looking move. I didn't take many notes in this one as I wanted to just sit back and enjoy it. More than worthy of its semi-main event position. [But what happened to Ian Rotten?]

Raven defeated Sabu and The Sandman in a 3 way dance to become the new 3PW World Heavyweight Champion. No juice at all in this one, which was a little surprising although I didn't really notice the lack of it until afterward. The new commissioner made sure to stack the deck heavily in his own favor, most amusingly by banning Sandman from taking longer than 45 seconds for his entrance, using the Singapore cane, or smoking! [Perhaps a storyline way to cover having to cut Sandman's prematch ritual?] Yes Raven is doing the heel commissioner bit, although with this crowd it's hard to get it over as they cheer him no matter how many despicable things he does. It's the same kind of problem Christopher Daniels runs into with the prophecy gimmick in ROH. As for the match itself, let's face it. In 1995 or even 1998 this would have been a killer main event. In 2003 it's nostalgia. All 3 wrestlers are still great to watch but they aren't even attempting to work up the level they were at in the mid 90s, or at least they weren't in this match. Not that I want to see them kill themselves either; they've all sacrificed their bodies many times for the Philly fans. It's not like they were asleep at the switch for this match, it just didn't attempt to scale the insane heights of, say, Stairway To Hell 98. The crowd, who were pretty harsh on everybody else, couldn't have cared less what year it was and they ate up everything the guys did in this match. Even when Sabu was unable to properly execute his table spots because 3PW's tables kept collapsing, the normally unforgiving Philly fans let it go and popped huge for the botched spots. Lots of triple headlocks, etc. Lots and lots of interference from Jack Victory on Raven's behalf. Sabu did suicide dives on both Raven and Sandman at ringside. Denied the cane, Sandman used table, chairs, and a ladder. Raven did the bit where he put the ladder over his head and whirled around like a propeller knocking the hell out of the other two guys. The guys gave each other plenty of abuse with tables ladders and chairs. [Oh my.] Sabu put Sandman through a table that was more or less already broken in half, propped up in the corner. He went for the pin, but Jack Victory grabbed Sabu's leg and yanked him outside the ring so that Raven could score the cheap pin on the battered Sandman for the win and the belt. After the match Raven stood over the fallen Sandman and told him I've taken everything from you, I've taken your wife and your kid and I've taken the 3PW title and now that I've beaten Sandman and Sabu, next month I'll beat Sandman by himself for the belt. Sandman crotched him and Victory dragged Raven away. So I guess we can assume that they will be continuing the Sandman vs Raven feud from mid-90s ECW.

Return date is Saturday afternoon12/27 with a 3pm bell at the ECW Arena. [In direct competition with the ROH fan fest and afternoon show but not with the ROH/All Japan show that night.] 3PW announced during this show that they would be running at this building every month from now on. Matches officially announced for the 27th (so far) are Zandig/Sabu vs Lynn/Messiah, "Hot Stuff" Matt Stryker vs "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka [God help me but I really want to see that one] and Raven vs Sandman.